Did “straight news” correspondent Ed Henry do any research before spouting off his false conspiracy theory that Canada censored Donald Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2? Or did Henry just ignore the facts in order to suck up to Dear Leader?

A few days ago, while Henry was moonlighting from his job as chief national correspondent and before picking up his new gig as co-anchor of America’s Newsroom, he was moonlighting as an opinion host on Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends.

In case you missed this latest Fox poutrage, Canadian television cut Dear Leader’s Home Alone 2 cameo in order to make room for commercials in 2014, long before Canada’s prime minister was caught laughing at Trump, along with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, at a NATO summit reception. In fact, Canada's prime minister at the time was conservative.Stephen Harper.

Yet Henry accused, “They needed to leave room for commercials – that’s the one part, that’s six or seven seconds.”

Actually, no. Canada’s CBC TV said other scenes were cut, too – a total of eight minutes worth.

Henry seems to have done no fact checking before spouting off his falsehood.

Instead, Henry continued spreading his fake news with a projection about other people’s lack of reason. “How bad is your Trump derangement syndrome for you to cut that out of a happy movie?” Henry “asked.”

Guest Mark Steyn opined that the broadcaster “was actually terrified that people will remember that before [Trump] was the new Hitler, he was actually a beloved, mainstream cultural figure.” As "evidence," Steyn pointed to Trump's appearance on Regis Philbin’s “terrific” Christmas album, apparently as part of some humorous version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Of course, before he became known as a murderer, O.J. Simpson was a beloved mainstream cultural figure, too. But I digress.

“it’s also censorship,” cohost Katie Pavlich baselessly added.

But as Joy Reid explained yesterday in a hilariously snarky smackdown (my latest for Crooks and Liars), Trump muscled his way into films that massaged his ego by filming him, then cut him out before the film was released. Reid is an opinion host but she found and relayed the facts that Henry missed or deliberately ignored. This quote from Matt Damon in a 2017 Hollywood Reporter reveals that Trump was not quite the beloved cultural figure Fox was claiming:

The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of [Trump’s] buildings, you had to write him in a part. [Director] Martin Brest had to write something in "Scent of a Woman" — and the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bullshit shot: Donald Trump walks in and Al Pacino’s like, “Hello, Mr. Trump!” — you had to call him by name — and then he exits. You waste a little time so that you can get the permit, and then you can cut the scene out. But I guess in "Home Alone 2" they left it in.

When Henry was named as the future co-anchor of “straight news” America’s Newsroom, Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media, called him “one of the best all-around journalists in the field.”

Watch what Fox News considers a great journalist below, from the December 26, 2019 Fox & Friends via Vox’s Aaron Rupar.

(Henry image via screen grab)